


That Heartbeat

by thesinfulship



Category: Daredevil (Comics), Marvel, Marvel (Comics)
Genre: Alcohol, Depression, Exes, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-28
Updated: 2017-05-28
Packaged: 2018-11-05 19:49:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11020356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesinfulship/pseuds/thesinfulship
Summary: On the anniversary of his father's death this year, Matt is alone. More profoundly alone than perhaps he has ever been in his life. That is, until the last person he expected to encounter walks in.





	That Heartbeat

Matt Murdock, as a rule, was not much of a whiskey drinker. 

 

Not really much of a liquor drinker in general, actually. A scotch once in a blue moon, if someone offered, but he didn't keep it in the house. Maybe a gin and tonic on a hot night a couple times throughout the summer, if he needed some help getting to sleep. That was about it. For the most part, Matt gravitated toward wine - good wine - and a select few artisanal beers. He usually found that liquor hit him too hard, too fast, and it wasn’t as enjoyable an experience as the lower alcohol content found in wine and beer. 

 

Tonight, though, being hit hard and fast was exactly his goal. 

 

He sipped at his second whiskey and ginger ( _ the syrup in the ginger ale was running low and would need to be replaced soon, the bartender had worn rubber gloves earlier in the night while slicing limes, a lingering hint of the smell of industrial dish soap drifted into the air with each bubble from the soda) _ , quiet and almost completely still but for the motion of his arm lifting the glass to his lips. Across the bar, a few men sat laughing raucously at a blue joke, an older woman ate her dinner of a cheap, previously-frozen burger and fries, and a younger woman sipped at a martini. The woman with the martini probably didn’t know she was pregnant, but Matt had heard the little fluttering heartbeat and detected the telltale scent of the changing hormones in the air when she had leaned over the bar to order. In another life, he might have gently warned her, but it wasn’t possible now. In any case, it was the only drink she was having, and he could tell by her scent it wasn’t a routine thing for her. The baby would be fine. 

 

“Get you something to eat?” the bartender offered when he walked past Matt. “Don’t have a braille menu or anything, but I can read it out to you.”

 

“No. Thank you,” said Matt, trying to smile to show his appreciation but not quite hitting the mark.

 

The bartender went back to work ( _ he had spilled some of the martini onto his wrist while shaking it, his hair product had expired three weeks ago, he liked to crunch on Altoids during busy shifts, he was wearing a bandage with a velcro fastener on his left knee) _ and Matt set the glass down. He ran his fingertip over the rim of the glass for a while, just feeling every minute detail and flaw, every invisible weak spot that would eventually cause the glass to shatter and be ruined. To be tossed into the trash and forgotten.

 

_ Careful there, Matthew. You may be projecting _ .

 

Matt almost chuckled to himself, but it was mostly just an imperceptible little downward huff that skirted over the stubble on his chin. He hadn’t shaved in a couple of days. No interest, even though his face felt like it was covered in little needles at this point. Nothing he couldn’t handle. 

 

_ Guerlain perfume, epsom salts, cilantro, jewelry cleaner, clicking three-inch heels, rustling of blazer against waistband of pants, jingle of keys, that heartbeat, that heartbeat, that little inhale before sitting down and that heartbeat -  _

 

_ Kirsten. _

 

“What can I get for you?” the bartender was asking as Matt clued back in, letting the details of Kirsten McDuffie fade and expand into the complete image of her. 

 

“Whatever he’s drinking. And another for him,” Kirsten said, indicating Matt with her head.

 

Matt set down his now-empty glass, deliberately missing the coaster and turning toward Kirsten. He didn’t have to put on an act to show his surprise or his confusion. 

 

“Kirsten?” 

 

“In the flesh,” said Kirsten, and Matt felt his heart tug at the sound of her voice. “I’d ask how you are, but…”

 

“That obvious, huh?”

 

“Well, you’re drinking liquor. And you’re alone. And I know what day it is.”

 

The bartender set down two glasses, and Kirsten nudged Matt’s against his knuckles so he could take it. Once he had it in hand, Kirsten gently clinked her own glass against his. 

 

“To your dad,” she said softly. 

 

Matt couldn’t speak, but he nodded and sipped his drink. It was a little stronger than the last two, which he appreciated. Kirsten shuddered a little as she sipped hers. 

 

“Ugh,” she said, and Matt could tell she was wrinkling her nose. “No offense to your dad, but what a terrible drink.”

 

Matt made that same little huffing non-laugh sound from earlier. “Yeah. Well. He wasn’t the most refined guy on the planet.”

 

“Good guy, though.”

 

“Yeah. Good guy.”

 

They were quiet for a while, until Matt shifted to face Kirsten a little more. She countered to match his body language. 

 

“Kirsten...listen, I-”

 

Kirsten held up her hand. “No need.”

 

“You don’t know what I was going to say.”

 

“I can guess. Something along the lines of an apology for the sudden breakup, the months of radio silence, some line about wanting to make things easier on me, that sort of thing. Am I on the right track?”

 

Matt deflated a little and nodded. 

 

“Thought so,” said Kirsten. “So. Like I said. No need.”

 

“Why are you here?”

 

Kirsten paused at that. “Do you want me to leave?”

 

“No,” Matt said a little too quickly. “No, I just...why?”

 

“Because you shouldn’t have to mourn alone.”

 

“I’m not  _ mourning _ . It was a long time ago. I’m just...remembering.”

 

“Looks like a little more than that.”

 

Matt shrugged and fiddled with his glass a little. “Been a long day, that’s all.”

 

“You’re sure you don’t want me to leave?”

 

“Please don’t.”

 

Another long silence, in which Matt shrugged off his jacket and Kirsten put her phone on silent mode, and then Matt spoke again.

 

“He would have been sixty years old this year. Milestone.”

 

“Did you do anything for his birthday?” Kirsten asked. Matt cocked his head. “I didn’t forget.”

 

“I went to his grave. Visited for a while. Nothing out of the ordinary. I mean, that was hard too, but this day is just…”

 

“I get it.”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Yeah. My mom, you know. Birthdays are more bittersweet, but the day she died always hurts a lot.”

 

Matt realized, with a sinking feeling, that he had overlooked the day Kirsten’s mother had died. He hadn’t reached out at all. His face fell and his chin dropped as the shame bubbled up. Kirsten obviously sensed it, because she set her glass back down and turned a little more toward him. 

 

“Don’t,” she said. 

 

“I should have called.”

 

“It would have been nice, but I get why you didn’t.”

 

“No, there’s no excuse. I should have...I’m sorry.”

 

Kirsten shrugged. “It was a work day. I was distracted. Foggy brought me some cashew curry on his way home and we caught up for a while. It ended up a nice enough day.”

 

“Yeah, Foggy says you two have been getting together a lot since you moved back.”

 

“If that’s jealousy in your voice, I’m going to spill my drink on those expensive pants of yours.”

 

Matt fell quiet at that, but Kirsten gave him a little nudge with her elbow.

 

“That was supposed to be funny,” she said. “Yeah, Foggy and I see each other a lot these days. I guess it’s just that we both miss how things used to be. Those days were good.”

 

“They were,” Matt said, his voice a mumble now.

 

“Foggy’s worried about you.”

 

“Foggy is sick to death of me.”

 

“Oh, please. He is not. He misses you more than you know.”

 

Matt shook his head and drained his drink, then signaled to the bartender to bring two more for them. 

 

“He does,” Kirsten insisted. 

 

“Foggy is...he has some strange sense of obligation, that’s all. I’ve told him it’s not necessary. He doesn’t have to stick with me if I make him so unhappy. It’s all my doing anyway.”

 

“Listen to me. Foggy Nelson is practically  _ allergic _ to the idea of completely severing ties with you. He loves you. And he’s really worried about you. Whatever has you guys sore with each other, he still cares.”

 

“I doubt he’s that worried.”

 

“Thursday, 3:30 PM, text message. His exact words: ‘I’m really worried about Matt’.”

 

That silenced Matt, who leaned a little more on the bar then and fiddled idly with a straw.

 

“So what’s making him worry, hmm?” Kirsten asked, again pushing Matt’s drink against his hand. 

 

“Usual stuff, I guess.”

 

Kirsten sipped at her drink a bit. Matt could tell she was trying to find the right words for something important she wanted to ask by the way her heart and breathing changed. 

 

“Okay. I’m just going to ask flat-out, then: exactly how bad is it?” she asked, as directly as if they were in a courtroom. 

 

“That’s not - it’s - I’m fine,” Matt stammered. 

 

“When we broke up, you told me you needed to distance yourself and focus on getting better, that you couldn’t deal with a relationship when you couldn’t think about anything but the depression. That moving back here would be better for you, that you had to do it alone, and that you had to do all this in order to finally beat it for good. That’s what you told me, and that was the better part of a year ago, and you look like you’ve been through hell twice since then. So...this is me, trying to reach out, because once upon a time that helped a little.”

 

Matt felt a little sick to his stomach as he remembers how he had to hurt Kirsten, how it was the last thing he ever wanted to do, how technically his excuse for ending the best thing he’d ever had was true. He could barely function in those days, could barely think of anything beyond his next venture into the night. He couldn’t bear to even touch her in those last few days, he was so afraid of losing his will to give her up to protect her. Of course, she didn’t know the truth now. She couldn’t know, not anymore. Not after he stole away that part of her memories. History had been rewritten for her, and he had not done any editing. 

 

“Hey,” Kirsten said, her voice so gentle now it broke Matt’s heart. She put her small hand on his wrist. “Matt. You know you can talk to me, right? Whatever...happened between us, I’ve had time to get past it, okay? I’m not saying I’m thrilled about it, but...I’m here.”

 

Matt closed his eyes behind his glasses and let his head drop a little again. The drinks were making him looser and sadder at the same time. Add in the symphony of Kirsten’s voice and heart and breath, and his chest felt like it might crack open. She must have seen it on his face, because her hand tightened around his wrist. 

 

“Talk to me, please. That’s why I’m here. That’s why I came in here tonight, okay? Talk to me. Put all our past shit aside and just...let me be your friend.”

 

It took Matt a long time to speak, to even move, after that. His throat felt like there were iron claws raking at it, his chest an open wound, his grip on his glass so tight he could have shattered it if he moved just right. Kirsten waited patiently -  _ God, she’s really a saint  _ \- until he could talk. 

 

“It...has been hard,” he said, knowing it was the understatement of the century but not able to truly open up about the gritty details. “I’ve tried to focus on work, and on my new place, and...but I can’t seem to get my head out of the mud. I...do you ever feel like you’re just...so deep into something that you’ve passed the point of no return? Like even if you were able to turn back, the journey out would take too long?”

 

Matt heard a change in Kirsten’s heartbeat at that, and she took a deep breath. She was steadying herself. 

 

“Matt. How concerned should I be?” she asked, pointed but gentle.

 

“That...sounded worse than I meant it.”

 

“You sure about that?”

 

He hesitated a hair too long, and Kirsten leaned in closer to him. 

 

“Hey. Listen to me. I can help you, okay? We can find someone for you to talk to. Or...or somewhere you can go, if you need to be safe,” she said in a low voice. 

 

Matt shook his head. “No. No, it’s fine. I don’t need that.”

 

“There’s no shame in it. At all.”

 

“I know that.”

 

“But you’re feeling it anyway. Because Matt Murdock can’t stand to admit he’s not Superman, right?” Kirsten bumped his arm with her elbow a bit. “You don’t have to do everything alone.”

 

It must have been the alcohol, because Matt wouldn’t have said it had he been sober and more in control, but in that moment, he turned his head toward Kirsten and spoke in a flattened tone.

 

“But I am alone.”

 

Kirsten shook her head and scooted closer to Matt, but he didn’t let her get out whatever it was she was about to say (he could guess, some variation on “ _ you’re not alone, there are people who love you, there are people who can help you _ ”). 

 

“It’s by choice,” Matt continued. “I choose to be alone. I made that decision and I have to stick to it.”

 

“But  _ why _ ? Why do you feel like you’re better off cutting out the rest of the world?” Kirsten challenged him. 

 

“Because the rest of the world is better if I cut it off from me.”

 

“Oh, now, that’s just not true, and some part of you has to know that.”

 

“Maybe once. Not anymore.”

 

“Can we get some water over here?” Kirsten asked the bartender before turning back to Matt. “This is what I meant. This kind of talk...it’s scaring me.”

 

“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to-”

 

“Hey. I didn’t say that to make you feel bad, I said it to try and make you hear it. If it were me saying these things to you, what would you think?”

 

He couldn’t deny that she had a point, but he still stubbornly shrugged and accepted the water placed in front of him at the same time as he gave the bartender a little signal for one more round. 

 

“You need help, Matt. That’s not a weakness or a judgment or whatever else you may think. It’s just a fact. You’re human. We all need help sometimes. God knows I do. So would you please, please just accept it? Just give it a shot?”

 

Matt had drained the water in his glass by that point and reached for the fresh whiskey and ginger waiting for him. His knuckles knocked against a couple of upside-down shot glasses. Well, that was encouraging - someone on the island of Manhattan still believed in the noble concept of the buyback.

 

“Matt?” Kirsten prompted when he didn’t say anything. 

 

“I’ll think about it.”

 

“You’ve had months to think about it,” she reminded him. “Which is what I thought you were doing after you...after we parted ways.”

 

Matt drained that last drink quickly and shoved the glass aside, hearing it clink deafeningly against the shot glasses. He winced a little at the sound. 

 

“It’s complicated,” he said, then let those words just hang there.

 

“The phrase ‘it’s complicated’ is one of my least favorite in the English language,” Kirsten grumbled. “Of course it’s complicated. Not one single part of what you’re going through is simple.”   
  


“I don’t understand  _ why _ you’re  _ here _ ,” Matt said over her, and now the drinks were really kicking in good and proper. His accent had gone from that well-trained, neutral voice he had used since law school to a rougher, lazier New York dialect. He sounded like his dad. “You want to check on me, why? I stomped on your heart nine months ago, I didn’t talk to you, I...I don’t get it. I didn’t do anything to earn you caring about me again, not after all that mess I made. You just, what, you decided to come in and counsel me? You don’t even know what a mess I made. You think you know, but you don’t. There’s so much more. And it’s what I asked for, I asked for it, I specifically went out and said ‘hello, this is a mess I would like to make, please help me turn everything to shit’, but you didn’t know that, did you? If you knew, you’d turn and run. But you’re just sitting here and being  _ nice _ and...I don’t get it. I don’t get it, I’m sorry.”

 

“Okay, well, about 18% of that made sense.”

 

“You should go.”

 

“That offer expired. You’re stuck with me for the time being.”

 

“It’s for your own good.”

 

“I’m a big girl, Matt. I can decide that for myself.”

 

“I  _ want  _ you to go.”

 

“You’re a lousy liar when you’re drunk.”

 

“I’m not lying.”

 

“You are drunk, though.”

 

“I want you to leave.”

 

“You’re two inches from my face and you have the ‘I want to kiss you’ look. You don’t want me to go anywhere.”

 

They both fell silent at that. Matt had, indeed, gotten closer and closer to Kirsten during this exchange without even realizing it. A small lean in and they would be touching. 

 

_ Don’t think about that. Don’t think about the last time you touched her. Don’t think about the last time you heard how her heart skipped when you kissed her. Don’t think about the last time. _

 

Matt leaned back and rubbed at his forehead a bit, as though trying to erase the memory from his head. Kirsten let out a breath, the kind that Matt knew meant she was being hard on herself. 

 

“That was...inappropriate. I’m sorry,” she said. 

 

“It’s fine.”

 

“Look, let’s just...let’s get away from here, yeah? It’s a nice night out. Let’s walk. A little air, then some food, you’ll feel better.”

 

“I’m not hungry.”

 

“Tell that to the hangover you won’t have in the morning because you ate. Come on. You’ll thank me later.”

 

Matt tossed a few bills onto the counter, not really caring about the fact that he just tipped the bartender almost as much as their drinks cost. He grabbed his cane, swinging it a little harder that usual in his state, but shrugged off Kirsten’s hand when she took his arm to help guide him. She didn’t argue it, and they walked in silence through the streets for a while. At one point, Matt tripped over something, probably just something discarded onto the sidewalk, but he was inebriated enough that it caused him to stumble. That time, when he felt Kirsten’s hand on his arm, he didn’t shake it off. He leaned into it, into her, until once again they were just inches from one another. He moved in to kiss her, had every intention of kissing her, and she countered. She moved in, and he moved in, and when they were just millimeters apart...Matt turned his head. 

 

_ You can’t kiss her. You can’t lie like that. She doesn’t know what you really are anymore.  _

 

He heard Kirsten’s breath stutter a little, in embarrassment and surprise. 

 

“I - I’m sorry. I didn’t mean-” she started, but Matt shook his head. 

 

“I should be more careful when I’m walking,” he said, cutting her off before she could blame herself for what he almost did. “Come on, let’s just…”

 

He made some vague motion to indicate they should keep walking. There was a diner nearby, a good place for a late-night plate of something not too horrifically greasy. His gut seized a little when he remembered going there with Foggy. Back when they were really friends. Before. Before he screwed them all up. He was walking a lot faster all of a sudden, a breath from running, and Kirsten had to rush to keep up. 

 

“Matt.  _ Matt _ . Slow down. Come on, slow down. I’m in heels, have mercy,” she called, and he slowed. “If I didn’t know better I’d think you were trying to ditch me, but since I’m buying you a fantastic, diner-classic midnight feast, I’m sure that can’t be the case.”

 

“Sorry. I’m all…”

 

“Messed up. I know.”

 

“I wanted to kiss you.”

 

“Yeah, I...I noticed.”

 

“I shouldn’t have done that.”

 

“Takes two to tango,” she said, adjusting her jacket a little. “We have history, it’s an emotional night for you...it’s normal. It’s okay.”

 

“I won’t let it happen again.”

 

Something in Kirsten’s body language shifted at that, and he sensed her nodding, but stayed still so as not to give it away. 

 

“Okay,” she said, remembering he couldn’t see her. “Come on. Food. We can just...eat and talk. Or not talk. Or talk about shallow stuff. Whatever you want to do.”

 

Matt nodded and let her lead him into the diner, toward a booth by the window. The place was more crowded than he had expected, and his senses were pinging all over the place. 

 

_ Guy with two cats lady who takes multivitamins with her dinner girl with freshly-dyed hair girl who burned sage today they must be roommates maybe girlfriends they smell the same they shared the same air in an intimate space burning sage probably means new home four eggs on the stove coffee brewing someone ordered a ham steak three burgers medium well no cheddar on one mayo on one no tomato on the other hash browns smothered server changing apron in the back cook taking a smoke break the smoke is drifting in the cracked door other server making a milkshake BLENDER BLENDER BLENDER- _

 

He cringed at the sound of the blender and Kirsten made a sympathetic sound. “It’s really loud in here, sorry. We could go somewhere else.”

 

“No,” he said. “No. It’s good.” 

 

He zeroed in on Kirsten, filtering out the rest as much as he could despite the whiskey, still hot in his gut. He caught the scent of her perfume and breathed in deeply. He let it flood away the rest, let it wash over him. The motions were easy enough to go through: sit down, order water and coffee, listen to Kirsten read out the menu since it was faster than waiting for the server to track down the Braille copy, decide on a platter, sip coffee, wait for food. Easy. Except maybe not, because Kirsten placed a fingertip on the back of his hand and tapped lightly to get his attention, and it made him jump. How long had he been silent and in his own head? He thought maybe only a minute, but maybe longer than that. 

 

“Earth to Matt,” she said. 

 

Longer, then. 

 

“Sorry,” he mumbled. 

 

“Ten Hail Marys, twenty Our Fathers,” she joked. 

 

Matt managed a tiny laugh at that. “I’m not really all that Catholic anymore.”

 

“Still funny.”

 

“Still funny,” he agreed.

 

“Can I ask you something?”

 

Matt could tell she was gearing up to ask something hard, so he braced himself as best as he could before nodding. 

 

“What did I do? To make you think you’d be healthier without me?”

 

Any other question might have been better than that, because the pain it caused Matt was almost unbearable. He stalled for a moment by sipping his coffee. 

 

“It was nothing you did. It was my problems.”

 

“It’s not you, it’s me,” Kirsten muttered. 

 

“Sometimes that’s the truth. I...I couldn’t stay. I couldn’t do that to you.”

 

“Do what?”

 

_ Let you find out that I’m Daredevil and have that somehow, inevitably, cause you to die or otherwise lose your life as you know it, because that is what happens to everyone I love at some point, usually sooner rather than later, and that is the constant weight I bear on my aching shoulders _ , he thought.

 

Aloud, though, he said: “I’ve dealt with this for a long time. I know what it does to the people around me.”

 

“Depression is an illness, not a curse. Just because you have a breakdown, that doesn’t mean everyone else’s lives get ruined forever.”

 

_ Tell that to Milla Donovan _ . 

 

“It’s not...a breakdown. Not this time, not exactly,” he said quietly as the food arrived. The smell of his corned beef hash, toast, and scrambled eggs mingled oddly with Kirsten’s tuna melt. “It’s more like a hostile takeover. Something I didn’t ask for that happened anyway, that forced me out of my own life, the life I had worked so hard to build, and into something...awfully familiar, but in the worst way.”

 

It was the closest he could get to the truth, the closest he could come to talking about what going back into the Daredevil closet had been like without actually talking about it. Not that using depression as a metaphor was entirely metaphorical, strictly speaking, considering how firmly it had a grip on him. Kirsten added pepper to her melt thoughtfully and absorbed that for a moment. He poked at his eggs and leaned his chin into his hand like a child. 

 

“I was so angry at you,” Kirsten said quietly. “The way things ended so suddenly, and how you just...dropped out and away like you’d never been there. The last place I wanted to end up was back out here, to be honest. I didn’t want to come back here, to all the memories. To you.”

 

Matt’s face burned a bit as the shame of it all rose back up. 

 

“But I’m glad I’m here,” she continued. “I’m glad I’m  _ here _ , right now. You let me in once, you remember that? That time it got bad, and I sat on your porch all night?”

 

“I could never forget that,” Matt said truthfully, trying to ignore the fact that she wouldn’t remember it was the Purple Children who caused that incident, that it was those same children who took her memories of him as Daredevil and replaced them with something else. 

“Well, we live in the age of sequels, and here I am. So maybe you can let me in a second time. Kind of seems like it’s meant to be, yeah?”

 

“You don’t - you don’t owe me anything.”

 

“This isn’t about owing or not owing. I know you, Matt. I’ve been down this road with you before and I know what it’s like for you. I know what things can help and what things don’t, and I speak fluent Murdock. This is about one person helping another person. That’s what you’re all about, isn’t it?”

 

“I used to be. I want to be.”

 

“Okay. So let me. Besides, I can’t give you that angry ex-girlfriend speech I’ve had in my head for the past nine months if you’re sad. That’s something you need to be at your peak for, otherwise it’ll be like sandblasting a spider web.”

 

Matt couldn’t help a smile at that, which he knew made her smile in return. He managed a few bites of his food before either spoke again. 

 

“I’m not saying we have to be...anything, really. I don’t even want us to be anything. I’m just saying, I can be a person you can call if you need. Sound good?” asked Kirsten. 

 

“Sounds good.”

 

“Good.”

 

“But I don’t understand why.”

 

“Because. I give a shit,” she said with a shrug. “Simple as that.”

 

“After what I did, you must have hated-”

 

“I never hated you. I was angry, yeah, and I cried for far longer than I’d like to admit. I did all the stages of grief like one does. But I didn’t stop caring. I never would. I never  _ could _ , inconvenient as that is. Maybe it doesn’t make sense, but...that’s just how it is. So let me care, and quit making me beg for permission to do so.”

 

It was probably the drinks more than anything that made Matt nod, made him agree and accept her words, but Kirsten clearly relaxed at that. They ate quietly, until Matt was just pushing the last of the hash around his mostly-cleared plate with his fork. Kirsten paid before he could protest, and they walked out, the city filling Matt’s still-muddied senses once more. This time, when Kirsten took his arm, Matt allowed it. 

 

“Where’s your new place?” she asked. “I’ll walk you home.”

 

“Three blocks over, two blocks up. But it’s okay, I can make it myself.”

 

“I know you can.”

 

Matt accepted that Kirsten was going to walk him home no matter how much he protested, and if he was honest with himself, he didn’t want her to leave him alone yet, so he he relented and allowed her to walk with her hand on his arm all the way to his apartment building. He could feel the heat of her hand through his jacket. 

 

“Is this it?” Kirsten asked as they reached the building. Matt nodded. “It’s nice.”

 

“It’s fine, yeah.”

 

They stood there in front of the door for a few seconds, like two kids after a date playing chicken with curfew. All Matt wanted to do was kiss her. Well, no, that wasn’t all he wanted to do. He wanted to kiss her, to take her upstairs, to take her to bed, to exhaust each other and then fall asleep with his arms around her, fall asleep to the sound of her slow breaths and gentle heartbeat while she rested her head on his chest...he wanted to go back, back to before everything had broken. But mostly, right then, he just wanted to kiss her and feel happy and loved for a moment, for the first time in far too long. 

 

Before he could even open his mouth to say the words he hated to say to her, before he could say goodbye, he felt a soft squeeze of her hands on his, followed by sudden emptiness and cold when she released him.

 

“Be well, Matt,” said Kirsten, and she turned, the sound of her heartbeat fading into the city as she walked away. 


End file.
